How to Serve Your Husband

I want you just to remember that being a human is hard because of sin. This actually wasn’t the plan and I’ve thought about it a lot because we know that God is so powerful that he could just snap his fingers and like fix everything and everything could be perfect and lovely. But really think about that for a minute. Really think about forcing someone to do something and how it would feel. Let’s imagine that we could do that with our children. Let’s imagine that we could snap our fingers and we could have perfectly behaved children. Yes, mom. Thank you, mom. This dinner is wonderful. Thank you for serving us. And have like weird Stepford children that just smiled all the time and said, yes, especially because you did it, right.

Let’s just say that some genie came and you said, I want perfect obedient children who just do everything that I want. It would be so unsatisfying. It would feel so weird. It would feel so empty. Same thing with your husband. If you could just get like a magic drinking potion and give it to your husband and he could suddenly do everything that you wanted him to do it would feel so hollow. In order for love to be real and to feel good it has to be freely given. There was no other way that God could have created us. So he created a, even though we saw the whole thing, the best net outcome was creating us and giving us free will and choice to love him.

And then when we love him, it is such a beautiful thing. When we choose to recognize who God is and to submit our lives to him, it is so pleasing to him. And we’ve all had moments, like that with our husbands and with our children out of their own free will; they just do something so nice for us and it feels amazing because it is freely given.

And so one, we feel grumpy that life is hard, which all of us do. All of us are like, Ugh, Lord, could you just magic wand on my life and make it better? Because we know that he can’t. Remember, that he had to give us freewill and the consequence of original sin is that the world does not look the way that he wants it. And he’s trying to make the best of it and we do the same thing with our children. When they make poor decisions we try to make the best of it. We still give them consequences and we might sit them down and explain something like, hey, lying isn’t good. It makes you feel terrible and it hurts the people around you.

Now we don’t shun them forever. We don’t go, hey, seven-year-old you lied to me once and now I am not your mom anymore, and I’m not going to love you. And it’s the same thing with the Lord, right? We choose the world over him all the time and he forgives us and has endless mercy for us and welcomes us back and says, all right, I love you. Now let’s make the best of this. So when it comes to serving husbands, in the perfect order, the husband is a good and honorable man and makes good choices and leads the family.

But a lot of husbands don’t look like great leaders, either spiritually or financially, or even in the home. Maybe they’ve really defaulted to you as the person who decides all the things that are happening in the house. And it can be so easy to be bitter and upset about that and then to not want to serve your husband. Full disclosure, I was grumpy with my husband the other day. We were just having a rough day. Isn’t it funny how it can never even remember why? I can’t even remember why, but I just remember feeling rejected and hurt and like just stuck, like, Ugh, it’s so painful and I’m just stuck here. But I prayed, I sat with the Lord and I said, all right, Lord, what do you want out of this chapter of my life?

What do you want from me for this marriage? Right? How can I show up and honor you? And in my prayer life, I heard him say, I want you to serve your husband. And I had never heard that word before, he said a lot of things, but it really, really stuck out to me that God said, I want you to serve your husband and Ooh, the feelings of my body. My body was like, no. I do not want to do that. And particularly when we’re grumpy is the time when we really don’t want to funnel over our husbands and, and say that they’re great. But I really sat with this charter from the Lord to serve your husband and I really wondered what it meant.

But the Lord didn’t have to explain it to me. I asked myself, like, how could I serve my husband today? What does serving look like even when someone is not your favorite person? Let’s just say that you’re both a little stung about something and what’s the difference between giving someone the cold shoulder or being angry or hurt and shutting them out versus serving them? Now serving them may not mean passionately kissing someone when you’re upset. I don’t know what serving means but it certainly isn’t cold shoulder anger, snapping at them, stomping around the house. I don’t know if I stomped around the house. I stumbled inside, inside of me. I’m just like (stamp sound).

So this was such an interesting directive from the Lord, serve your husband. And I think it’s interesting that for me, at least I find that it’s much easier to serve him via the house, right? Like, well, I’ll clean up our bedroom or I’ll make dinner or I’ll clean the dishes. I find that personally. It is easier for me to give him that than it is for me to give him a hug or a smile. But the way that I heard this in my prayer life, didn’t feel like God was asking me to do the easy things that I didn’t have trouble doing. Like it felt convicting, like I knew what he was asking me was going to be difficult. But here’s the thing, I want to be a Saint. I want to die and go to heaven and spend eternity with Christ, I’ve asked him for that.

And I know that refining me from a: broken , sinful , prideful, angry human into a Saint obviously seems like saints or humans, but we just, I don’t know. There’s some, obviously there’s also some difference to us being very broken here and then being perfect in heaven. It will require refinement. It will require melting me down, which is extremely painful and creating in me something new and that has to happen all the time.

And so serving your husband means doing things that you know are good for him, for the sake of doing something good for him, we want to do good for our husbands. And pretty rarely, I think it does come up that wishing the good for your husband is sitting him down and saying, hey, I think maybe you’re drinking too much alcohol and just pointing that out very, very kindly and gently. I think that’s pretty rare though, that God is asking us to tell them truth like that as spouses, that is our job, right.

But I think we are giving them negative feedback so often thinking that that’s like that we’re coming from this noble holy place, but really we’re just angry and hurt and we’re like, eh, but maybe if you were nicer to me or you helped out more with the kids, or if you, whenever it is that we’re upset about. And that is not really serving our husbands. And your brain is going to want to act confused about this. Like, whoa, I just don’t even know. Yes you do. If you sat down right now and wrote down five things you could do for your husband to serve him better in his life to set him up for success in his life, but then also towards salvation. You would know what they are.

And you will know if you’re playing it safe and picking the ones that seem easy. Like, well, I cleaned up the dishes versus I spent time with the Lord and I let go of my anger so that when I walked in the room, the next time I saw him, I smiled. I smiled at my husband. I can serve him by smiling. Sometimes, I think the way that we serve our husbands is by what we don’t say. We don’t need to talk about our relationship all the time. We don’t need to tell them how they’re messing it up all the time. They already know. If you’ve been married more than five years, you guys have already said most of the things to each other. We’re not confused about that.

And I think the ultimate goal is dropping into compassion that we were supposed to live in the garden of Eden and be a family there, but we’re not. We’re in this horrible, painful, spiritual battle where we’re struggling with the since of the flesh. The desire to sin concupiscence. And then, and then we’ve got two people doing that who have to live together. It’s kind of wild, right? Of course it would be difficult and so I want you to think about the reasons why you bristle at serving your husband. And I’m talking about being sweet and being smiley. Those are the, I mean, at least for me, those are the things that are harder to give.

Why do you not want to do that? And then I just want you to take those things to the Lord. So it might be, he’s not Catholic or he doesn’t drive the spiritual things in our house. He’s not the spiritual leader of our household and I want to go okay, why does that mean you shouldn’t serve him? And like, well, he is irresponsible with money and he keeps just spending money on stuff and he doesn’t talk to me about it and it’s so unfair that it’s solely responsible and if you really loved me and the kids, he wouldn’t do that, okay. I got to give you a hug and I’d be like, that sounds terrible and also, why does that mean you can’t serve him?

And it’s what I find these places where I just, oh, I just really strain against what God is asking me. Now I see, oh, this is my work. This is my work. I’ve got to figure this out and I’m gentle with myself. I don’t shame myself. I don’t yell at myself. I don’t say you have to do this right now. I just kind of noticed like, oh, you have thoughts in your head Sterling. That is because your husband is a certain way, you don’t want to show up. In this way, I’ve been really meditating:. You know, love is patient, love is kind, it’s not boastful and the other thing that that passage talks about is that it doesn’t hold on to wrongs.

And I’ve been really praying over that. Does not hold onto past hurts or wounds or wrongs, different translations say different things. But it’s interesting when I say, why do you not want to smile and serve your husband? Probably the things that are going to come up in your mind are things that have happened in the past. And I’ve been wrestling with this because I think if someone has hurt you consistently doesn’t it seem wise to remember that. For example, and this was, I heard a business coach say this once. He said, if I walk up to you and I hold up a red card, and then I smack you in the face. He said your ability to succeed in business is related to how many times it takes you to duck. So he goes, some people will duck on the second time, hold up the red card. They’ll duck on the second time. And he goes, some people have to be smacked 10 times in the face before they learn whatever it is that they need to learn in their business.

But it was, it was kind of a silly visual, but it was powerful to me as it represented kind of the speed at which someone learns a lesson. But let’s imagine that your husband is hurtful to you in some way. Maybe again, not the spiritual leader of the household, maybe drinks too much. Maybe isn’t great with the money, is on his phone all the time. I hear all these things for the women that I coach and in my own marriage, I have my list of things.

And let’s just say that he holds up a red card and he smacks you in the face. Obviously not really physically, I just mean emotionally. Doesn’t it seem right then to be guarded. To protect your heart to kind of close it. Imagine, putting your hand over your heart and being like, Ooh, I’m not sure I’m going to let you in there because you keep emotionally hitting me. But this passage in the Bible says “Do not hold on to past hurts to wounds, to wrongdoings.” And here’s the thing, the ways of the Lord are not the ways of the world, they are almost always the opposite. And so my worldly brain, my reading of psychology books, my brain wants to go well, hey, if he’s going to, let’s just use mismanaged money, he’s going to consistently mismanage money. Of course, I’m going to be angry. Of course, I’m going to close my heart to him. And that’s where God kind of swoops in and goes really? why?

Money is the thing of the world anyway, why are you doing that? I have called you to serve this man. Now I always have to say this a hundred percent of the time, a hundred percent of the time. I am not saying that if your husband is hitting you, you should stay in an abusive marriage. I’m not saying that. Like, there always is a person in a crowd when I’m speaking, who really is in that kind of marriage and needs to leave and be safe and get help. But for the vast majority of us, it’s usually some sort of psychological warfare or emotional battling. And it feels really unfair and it feels really true and it really feels like we shouldn’t have to serve him.

And then when people talk about Jesus kissing his cross. I think Jesus kissed his cross, but he didn’t have to kiss the guards who were scourging him. Do you know what I mean? Like Jesus kissed His cross, which was kind of the mission, but you didn’t have to kiss the guards. So my brain is like, hey, I’m willing to be in a marriage that’s difficult and carry that for you, Lord. But it feels really hard to have to mouth kiss someone that isn’t living the way that you think that they should live. And yet, so clearly when I prayed and when I talked to the Lord, it was so clear He said, I want you to serve your husband. And this was a bad day. A lot of times on bad days, God just goes, hey Sterling, I love you and I’m with you and this is okay. Like he just holds my heart and it was just surprising to me that on this particular day, he said, you need to serve your husband.

And it was very convicting and I’m really working on it. I’m really working on this and this is where life coaching meets Catholicism. Life coaching has you slow down your thinking to understand what’s going on there? What are the thoughts that are making you feel so angry or protective or withdrawn? And are they true? And even if they are true, so what?

And, but listen, when God says, so what he says, it was so much love. Like if we go back to husband and this managing the money and you saying, Lord, this is totally not fair. He shouldn’t be mismanaging this money and the Lord goes, Jesus, like loving Jesus with the most smiley kind eyes says, so what? So what if he’s mismanaging the money? You’re okay. I got you. Hasn’t it all worked out all the other days of your life? Why are you upset about this?

I’ve been praying for the surrender novena. Pretty much I just, I now just pray that all the time. I just have it on a loop. I love it so much and it’s basically just Jesus, over and over again, going, hey, why are you worrying about that? I got you. So I, a hundred percent believed that women are under the headship of husbands and we should serve them and I don’t think we should enable sinful behavior. But it’s pretty rare that that’s what we’re talking about and I think it’s okay. If you don’t want to sashay up to your husband and give him a passionate kiss, but you could give him a smile.

You can serve him by being kind and respectful and I’m standing here acknowledging that’s difficult. I’m not saying it’s easy. But I think it’s what a lot of us need to hear. And if you feel angry or hurt or sad, I just want you to explore it with the Lord, you know, light a candle, bring the Lord in and just say, Lord, show me the truth of this. I have found more healing, more hope, more clarity in just talking to God than I have in psychology books and in therapy. And that doesn’t surprise me, of course that’s the way that he would set it up. So let us be wives who serve our husbands in the world right now that is so against husbands, so against men, so against marriage, I just see it everywhere.

Let us be ones that love and serve husbands even when they don’t deserve it. That is the gospel message. God doesn’t say: you will have eternal life, but only if you’re a good girl, only if you get good grades, and only if your house is clean. He says, come to me, tired and weary and broken and messy and just keep choosing me. And I will keep giving you mercy and bringing about good from this messy story. And that is the best that he can give us because he had to give us free will. We had to be completely free to choose him and so there is sin and darkness in the world, and then we have to build a marriage and a family within that environment. And we are all just trying to figure that out.

All right my friends, I love you. I’m praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.